Journey Maps and Personas
Overview
NWEA did not have a clear visual or interconnected view of the customer journey cycle from pre-sales to the first term of product usage. Teams operated in somewhat separated silos focusing on their own processes without having an understanding of how a decision during the sales cycle might impact the team onboarding the new customer. The goal of the project was to create visibility into the customer journey and where there were opportunities to collaborate better enhancing the customer and employee experience.
Biggest Challenge
Finding the balance between too little information and too much information was not an easy task. During the process of synthesizing information, I consulted with several folks within the Product Management department and our User Experience team to learn what level of information would be useful and actionable. These conversations not only taught me new skills but provided me with an opportunity to get my findings in front of the teams that had a lot of influence on future development prioritization for product enhancements.
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Legend
Blue diamonds = decision points
Green square = interactions with customers and NWEA staff
Blue ovals = pain points and opportunities
Blue dialogue bubble = persona story
The Approach
Personas were created to anchor concepts to characters that resembled true customers or partners as NWEA called them. Once the personas (Jacob, Janet, and Jason) were created interviews occurred with various staff members across sales, services, and professional learning. During the interviews, a series of questions were asked across larger topics.
Explain your daily work and what it would look like to work with Jacob, Janet, or Jason (various different-sized accounts, unique needs, etc.) to find differences and commonalities across customer segments.
Explain what are your biggest pain points working with your current processes and procedures and internal teams.
Explain what your and your customer’s biggest pain points are during the pre-sales, contract signing phase, onboarding, and the first term using the product.
The information was gathered across a total of 20 individuals, synthesized, and added to a journey map associated with the personas highlighting the processes, pain points, and opportunities.
Outcomes
Had a better understanding between sales, services, and professional services on how team processes, procedures, and collaboration could occur. Information gathered from the journey maps and personas laid foundational work that was used when the services department was exploring new service offerings. The outcomes were more informational and provided insight into making more intentional and informed decisions versus experiential gut feelings. Personas became more prominent within the organization in all lines of business and journey mapping was more common outside of marketing, user experience, and product management.